


That Cool Cool Kiss

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-07-31
Updated: 1998-07-31
Packaged: 2018-11-20 18:32:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11340990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: Krycek and Mulder have meaningless sex and a meaningful conversation. Romance.





	That Cool Cool Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

That Cool Cool Kiss by Rachel Lee Arlington

From:   
"That Cool Cool Kiss"  
By Rachel Lee Arlington  
  
Please forward to ATXC  
Please Archive  
NC17, SR, Slash. Yummy.  
SUMMARY: Krycek and Mulder have meaningless sex and a meaningful conversation. Sequel to "Gift Box".  
CERT: NC17. Graphic descriptions of the two most desirable men on the planet having sex. If you have a problem with this...get help. Thank you Nicole B. I have seen the error of my ways. From now on, if it's Arlington and it involves Krycek and Mulder, it's NC17. I'm a fag hag and proud of it.  
DISCLAIMER: In case you hadn't noticed, Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen Productions own everyone in this story, including me. Chris, I want my life back. I remember just four short years ago I didn't go to sleep and wake up with the words "Fox Mulder" on my lips. And it got worse when Alex arrived. Have you any idea what it's like to know that your dying words will be: "Stupid ass haircut..." ?  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Doh, ray, mee, fah, so...At this stage I know less about where this thing is going than you do. Enjoy. This story is dedicated to Phyre, who named it. 

* * *

"That Cool Cool Kiss"   
By Rachel Lee Arlington.

The first time Mulder had no warning, but this time there is a second or two when he realizes that something is going to happen to him. 

He is sitting at his desk, his jacket hanging on the chair back behind him, doing battle with an expenses return and finding that he has no hope of winning, and half considering giving up and going home. It's late and he's tired. Maybe if he gets really lucky and Scully feels really charitable she'll finish this tomorrow. 

Then the light in the room changes. It doesn't brighten or darken, it just changes. The sheet of paper in front of him seems to develop a faint halo around it. Mulder looks up, looks around the office. Everything has the same faint luminescence. Like vegetation after a rainstorm. Crap, he thinks, I'm not starting with epilepsy at my age am I? He puts his two hands on the edge of the desk, pushing himself back and

"Hey, Mulder."

Mulder blinks but doesn't fight what he's seeing.

Alex Krycek is sitting slouched on Mulder's battered black leather couch, Mulder's treasured Knicks' match ball between his hands, long fingers splayed out over its curves as he turns it and tosses it slightly. Mulder takes him in, from head to toe, in one long look. Neatly shorn dark hair, gleam of dark green eyes under long black lashes, the straight careful set of his mouth ever so slightly quirked at one corner. The black leather of his jacket creaking a little against the couch upholstery. White t shirt, faded out blue denims. Long muscular legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, one battered black canvas basketball boot wedged over the other.

For a second Mulder feels a wave of ghostly emotions lift and turn inside him. Anger, hate, betrayal, desire for revenge. But ghosts are all they are. The wave drops away from him and leaves him on a shore of excitement and anticipation. 

"Rachel, right." Mulder says it as a statement, not a question. Krycek gives a single crisp 'got it in one' nod. Mulder turns slowly, looking around his own living room. "Why here? She can put us anywhere she likes, right?"

"Bridal suite of the Capitol Hilton if she feels like it." 

Mulder smiles slightly at the implication but keeps turning. "I don't get it. Why yank me out of my office just to bring me here?"

"Who knows." Krycek is tapping the basketball lightly against his sharp little chin. "She must have some reason." He says it as a dismissal, but then sits up a little straighter, taking the basketball away from his face. "She must have a reason." This time it's a keen statement of fact. "Look around. Is everything the way it normally is?"

Mulder smiles at Krycek's unconscious application of crime scene technique. Look for what's out of place. And that thought makes it click.

"It's tidier."

"It is?" Krycek sounds doubtful. He looks around at the stack of video tapes by the TV, the two separate piles of files and papers on the table at the window, the sweatshirt thrown over the back of the couch.

"Much tidier. Makes sense when you think about it. I have so much stuff, bits of paper, photos, all kinds of crap. I have to have some kind of organization going. Arrange your facts. Isn't that what we were taught at Quantico? Arrange your facts, and then look for the links. Can't find the links if everything is in a drift on the top of the desk." Mulder looks away from the table at the window towards the shelf unit. "And hey, look at this," he says in delight. He goes behind Krycek on the couch to the fish tank and hunkers down. Krycek turns sideways on his seat and looks at what Mulder is looking at. 

"So?" He asks, puzzled. Small fishes, blue and gold and electric crimson, pass and repass in the bright crystal water.

"I have fish."

"Mulder. You always had fish."

"No. No way. I never had time to clean them out and they all died and then I never had the heart to get rid of the tank." Mulder taps lightly on the side of the glass and sends the little living splinters of color scattering away. "This is great. What else?" He stands and looks at the shelves. "Oh cool." 

"What now?" Krycek sounds a little wary. He's still coping with the idea of Mulder having had a pet empty fish tank. 

"Sound system." Mulder is running his hand over the elegant black contours of the CD player.

"You didn't have one already?"

"Yeah, but it wasn't anything like as good as this. I never used it anyway. I don't listen to music. I mean...I don't, but I do. Now. If you see what I mean." Mulder is picking up loose CD's from the shelf, and then checking the stacked ones on the shelf below. "Look at this stuff. This is great. I love these bands." Mulder hits the play button on the deck without looking to see what's in it.

Krycek's eyes widen slightly as the sound hits him. It isn't that it's that loud, it's just very unexpected. Krycek gives himself a mental slap. Unexpected from Mulder maybe, but not from Rachel. She isn't going to leave him stranded with Mulder and a Neil Diamond album. No fear.

Tormented raw guitar line broken and paced by a beat like a breaking heart. Mulder turns away from the shelf unit and moves into the space beside the coffee table. His head goes back, eyes closing. He puts his hand up to his tie and pulls it open, pulls it off, lets it fall to the floor. 

"That'll do it." He opens his collar and top button, then the cuffs of his shirt, turning his sleeves up to his elbows. The music around him drops into plaintive seduction, then blossoms back out into a chaos of sound. Krycek, mesmerized, watches as Mulder turns slowly, his head thrown back, his arms loose at his sides. Mulder's shoulders lift and dip, as if the rhythm of the sound is breathing through him. He lifts his two hands, raking his fingers through his hair, then clasping his fingers behind his head for a moment before letting his arms drop again.

His hair is ruffled and mussed by the touch, one heavy hank of hazel brown hanging down on his forehead. Krycek watches his face, enjoying the sense of a sight stolen while Mulder's eyes are closed. Incredibly mobile, sensual, generous features. The faintest shadow of a frown shades across Mulder's forehead, then disappears, replaced by a face of dreamy concentration, then a flicker of a smile parts his lips, before he catches his lower lip between his teeth. And all the time he is turning, shoulders moving with the sound flowing through him.

Mulder's face is fascinating, but Krycek lets his gaze drop downwards. Along the long sinuous line of his throat, exposed as he lets his head hang back. The solid width of his shoulders and his chest, the white shadow of his undershirt seen through the white cotton of his shirt. The tanned skin of his forearms looking dark against the rolled up shirt sleeves. The narrow span of his waist and hips. The lean length of his legs, the broad span of his back, the hollow at the small of his spine, his ass. Mulder keeps turning, and Krycek, looking elsewhere, doesn't at first realize he has opened his eyes. 

Krycek gets completely busted, looking at Mulder with undisguised admiration. Mulder smiles lazily, getting an answering smile from Krycek's eyes, though his mouth is hidden behind the basketball, brought back up to his chin. Mulder gives a little more emphasis to the shrug and drop of his shoulders, to the faint swing of his hands, to the turn and sway of his hips. He pivots on one foot, a half turn, drops his head, his hair flopping forward, then turns back, lifting his head, meeting Krycek's eye again. The wave of sound dips and lifts around him, and he half breathes half sings the lyric, his eyes still on Krycek's fascinated watchful expression.

"...leave you there by yourself, chained to pain. I alone love you, I alone tempt you..."

Krycek sudden feels like the room is getting very warm, and there seems to be very little air. Mulder smiles again, and holds out one hand to Krycek, palm up.

"No way." Krycek smiles, turning the basketball between his hands.

"Come on, what are you afraid of?" Mulder gives a little quirk of his eyebrow, a tiny purse of his lips.

"Oh man, I don't believe you." Krycek gets up, putting the basketball down on the couch and goes to Mulder. Mulder takes his hands, twining his fingers in Krycek's, and draws him close. Krycek starts to wish the CD was Neil Diamond's Greatest. But Mulder seems to have no problem sorting out the slow majestic pace of the back beat from the storm of sound around and over it, and his body rocks in perfect fearless tempo. Krycek falters for an instant, but then picks up the pace from Mulder. To make it easier to match his rhythm, Krycek moves even closer. Mulder turns his head then turns back, putting his temple against Krycek's. They move slowly together.

The track ends, and in the space of silence Krycek tries to pull away, but Mulder tightens his grip on Krycek's fingers and murmurs against his ear:

"No, stay put. This one's good too."

This time it's something airier, still driven, but less tormented. Krycek is getting used to the situation, and when Mulder turns he turns easily with him. Mulder draws back his face from Krycek's, though he keeps their bodies close. 

Eye to eye. Mulder is at most a mean inch taller, but he is taller. As ever, he finds himself looking up at Krycek. Mulder has a loose round shouldered slouch that minimizes his height, whereas Krycek has a way of standing very straight, shoulders flexed back, head up, chin lifted, that makes the most of six foot. Mulder has even noticed on occasion that Krycek will unconsciously poise himself on the balls of his feet, his heels lifted fractionally off the ground. Ready to spring.

He and Mulder both have solid athletic bones: wide shoulders and long limbs. But Mulder's are hung with a runner's lean rangy muscles. Krycek, with only a shade heavier skeleton, is considerably wider and bulkier. Running bores Krycek in no seconds flat, but he'll work weights, and he'll spar for hours at a time, wearing out half a dozen opponents before he gives up, too exhausted to lift his gloved hand one more time. 

To Mulder, his own body is a structure for moving his mind from one place to another: a machine that it behooves him to keep in good running order. He feeds it (rather erratically), exercises it, washes it, ignores it. It fights back with insomnia and dyspepsia and bad headaches. Krycek would no more entertain the idea of a mind/body divide than a cat would. Krycek eats and sleeps and fights and fucks with a perfect unity of purpose. 

Eye to eye. Mulder's eyes are dark, almost charcoal gray; the artificial light in the living room stripping out the warmer more subtle shades Krycek knows are there. Mulder's eyelids are heavy, almost drugged looking. He breathes out softly against Krycek's lips. Not for the first time Krycek revels in the hot sweet quality of Mulder's breath. There is a permanent taint of rich sweet oily scent on Mulder's mouth; the scent of sunflower seeds.

That mouth is making Krycek crazy. Hungry. Horny. He reaches forward, his chin leading, lips parted. 

Mulder draws back by the same amount, smiling, eyes glowing. For a second Krycek frowns, hesitates, sees the smile. His frown changes to something not so severe, but still not impressed. He disentangles one hand from Mulder's clasp and reaches to hold Mulder's head, his fingers combing through the soft hair at the back of Mulder's skull, and as he leans in again he forces Mulder to hold still, overcoming the slight resistance he feels against his palm.

"Come here you." Mulder's own words spoken back to him in Krycek's husky voice.

Krycek's kiss begins like a cool cut of a blade. So sharp that at first Mulder doesn't know it hurts. Just the touch of cool firm dry lips against his, and the cool slightly sweet taste of Krycek's breath. He waits for something to happen. Krycek turns his mouth against Mulder's parted lips, opening his mouth a little more. Then more, leaning into him, forcing his jaws apart. Mulder frees his other hand and takes hold of Krycek by both hips. The texture of worn out denim, with its top stitching and rivets, seems rougher and less threatening than Krycek's hardly there kiss. 

Then he feels the touch of tongue on his teeth. Between his teeth. Into his mouth. There is a kind of fearful inevitability about the way Krycek kisses. You know it's coming, and you can't stop it. You don't want to stop it. Krycek brings his other hand up to Mulder's throat, his fingers spreading across the larynx, thumb and middle finger biting into the corners of Mulder's jaw. Mulder feels one tiny shiver of fear. Krycek could snap his neck between the hand on his throat and the hand on the back of his head. 

Krycek is pushing his mouth against Mulder's, his tongue a hard cool interloper, taking its time, exploring, testing. He draws back and takes a soft deliberate bite on Mulder's lower lip. Mulder is almost afraid to breath, afraid to distract Krycek. It's like watching someone doing some crazy stunt with a sharp knife, and being afraid that any move on your part could cause disaster. 

The blade that is Krycek's kiss moves down from Mulder's mouth, down over the tip of his chin, onto the skin of his jaw. Each kiss is a slow careful lean and lift of teeth, sending shivers down Mulder's spine. Mulder's skin is alive with cold fire, every touch of Krycek's mouth, and every contact with his slightly swaying body, a delicious dangerous torment. 

Krycek uses his grip on Mulder's throat to turn Mulder's head to one side, lifting his own face again, putting his mouth close to Mulder's ear. In doing so, as he turns his face past Mulder's, Mulder sees his expression. Teal green eyes narrowed, shaded with black lashes. The faint mark of a frown across his nose, and into the inner corners of his eyes. The fine bones of his features burning through his pale gold skin. A small shudder runs through Mulder's body. As Krycek puts his mouth to Mulder's ear, cool tongue and cool breath mingling in his kiss, an answering tremor goes through him.

Mulder stands helpless, hands clinging to Krycek's narrow denim clad hips as Krycek begins to very slowly and scientifically take him apart.

From his ear, along his jaw, to under his chin, then down his throat, Krycek lifting his hand to accommodate his kiss, keeping a grip on the back of Mulder's hair, then renewing his hold on Mulder's throat. Into the notch at the center of Mulder's collarbones, exposed in the open neck of his shirt. Back to the side of his neck. A bite, hard enough to make his knees weaken, and his head turn away, offering himself up to the sweet pain. Back to his mouth, holding him helpless as Krycek takes his hands away from Mulder's head and his fingers bite into Mulder's shoulders, his sides, pulling his shirt out from his trousers. The feel of cotton sliding upwards on his stomach, even muffled by the fabric of his undershirt, is enough to pull a slight moan up into Mulder's throat. Krycek breaks their kiss, looks at Mulder, eye to eye again.

Mulder feels the stir of Krycek's breath on his lips. Broken. Ragged. Excited. Mulder's heart stops and starts and the throb of it seems to go clear through him. Reckless, heedless of the danger, determined to prove his own courage, Mulder gets his hands to the back of Krycek's jacket, pulling it back and down and away from his shoulders. Krycek moves back a scant inch to give himself room to strip it off, turns from the waist only and flings it in the general direction of the couch.

Mulder's hands are already on Krycek's sides, gathering up his t shirt, pulling it out of the waistband of Krycek's jeans. Krycek gets his two hands behind his head, taking up handfuls of the back of his t shirt, pulling it off as if it burns. He is still pulling the folds of soft white cotton over his hands and letting it fall when Mulder tries to get his fingers into the waistband of his denims. Snake fast Krycek closes his fingers around Mulder's wrist, pushing his hand away. Mulder's eyes widen.

"No. This time I want you naked first." Krycek says roughly.

The word 'naked' goes over Mulder's skin as a palpable touch, catching at his lips and nipples and cock. He goes to lift his hands to his shirt buttons, but again Krycek knocks his hands away, impatient with Mulder's slow, desire drugged motion. One hand goes to the back of Mulder's head again, gripping him by the hair, pulling him in towards another calculating kiss, while the other hooks into the open neck of Mulder's shirt, snagging buttons out of buttonholes, his fingers moving swiftly down along the front of the garment. 

He fists a handful of the cotton at Mulder's shoulder and just strips the shirt off him, yanking and pulling it roughly off his arms, throwing it away.

Mouth to mouth. There is something almost maddening about Krycek's kiss. No matter how hard he leans on Mulder's mouth, how brutally he forces his tongue in, how deep and threatening the rasp of his teeth over Mulder's lips, he still seems cool and detached. Completely in control of himself. And his careful demeanor is forcing Mulder to stay still and quiet, despite the fevered thump of his heart, the way his breath burns in his nostrils, the fire on his skin where Krycek's knuckles brush his bare side, pulling his undershirt up. Mulder stifles a small groan in his throat. But Krycek hears it. And something in the little tentative sound enrages him. Control sliding away into consuming lust.

Krycek breaks the kiss, both hands twisting in Mulder's undershirt, dragging it off over his head, letting Mulder duck and turn and try not to get his head pulled off. While Mulder is still shaking his head and trying to toss his hair back, Krycek gets him by the throat again.

Mulder is ready for a hand on the back of his head and a kiss on his mouth, but that isn't what happens. Krycek's fingers close on his windpipe, tight enough to turn Mulder's breath to a hot rasp in his throat, so that he is forced to stretch his head back and work for air. Krycek's other hand snakes around Mulder's waist, into the small of his back, fingers biting into muscle and bone, holding Mulder immobile.

And then Krycek's cruel mouth comes down on Mulder's shoulder, into the hollow of his collar bone, into the hollow between shoulder and chest, onto the muscle at the top of his chest. Every kiss as savage as a bite, every bite flirting with pain. 

Mulder, in drowning desperation, snakes one hand around the nape of Krycek's neck, leaning a little on Krycek's bent back. His other arm is stretched down at his side, palm turned forward, as Krycek's mouth moves down over the muscle at the top of Mulder's shoulder, down onto his bicep. Then he shifts his weight slightly, a tiny back to the center motion, and Mulder feels cool breath tease on the supersensitive skin of his nipple. Mulder suddenly loses the lock on his knees and his body weight slacks down on Krycek. Krycek straightens to met it, his arm looping around Mulder's bare torso, supporting him. 

"Fox." Krycek's voice has all the warm tenderness that his love making lacks. "Come on, let's lie down." His hand on Mulder's throat turns to a gentle clasp, his arm around Mulder's body into an embrace. He leans in for a kiss. Mulder thinks of pilgrims, kissing the cold lips of marble saints. But the kiss when it comes is soft, forgiving, almost sweet.

"Yeah. Let's lie down." Something really interesting has happened Mulder's voice. It doesn't work anymore. The words come out as breath and sound completely unattached to each other. The breath gives the words shape, but the sound is just a croak.

"Come on." Krycek backs towards the door, his arm still around Mulder, leading him into Mulder's own bedroom.

Through the door. Krycek turns, turning Mulder with him, backing him up to the edge of the bed. Mulder feels the mattress against the back of his knees and gives himself up to his fate. He just goes slack, and they both fall onto the bed, Krycek putting his elbow out to catch his own bodyweight, so that he is half beside and half on Mulder. Mulder feels the crisp cold cotton of the quilt cover against his back and arms, and Krycek's smooth cool skin against his side. Krycek boosts himself higher on the bed, bringing himself to Mulder's mouth again. Mulder closes his eyes as the sharp edge of Krycek's kiss parts his lips.

Torment. Sweet torment. The torment of desire and pleasure, and his heart beating so hard it seems to be trying to beat itself clear out of his chest, breath that is a tearless sobbing, so that he is gasping against Krycek's mouth, snatching the air from his lungs. His skin like fever, burning for water. And at the center of it all, that cool mouth, cool breath, cool kisses. 

Krycek is kissing slowly down the length of Mulder's neck, into the hollow of his throat, into the hollows at the front of his shoulders, onto his chest. Before he makes contact with the brown skin of one nipple, Mulder surges up under him, anticipating the kiss. When it comes he surges again, and Krycek spreads his two hands over the shoulders beneath him, holding Mulder down.

Krycek uses his teeth, catching the hard flesh up, teasing it, letting it go. Over and over. Then he turns his head, doing the same to the other one, at the same time taking up the first in his fingers, pulling gently, then turning his touch into a serious pinch. Mulder gasps and twists, pulling away then pressing himself towards Krycek. To stop him moving around too much Krycek puts one hand on Mulder's throat again, and leans a little. Mulder groans out loud, a helpless sound dragging itself out past Krycek's spread fingers.

"Okay. It's okay." Krycek's voice sounds like a threat. His mouth moves down over Mulder's chest, over tanned skin, and crisp fair brown curls of hair, then onto the side of his rib cage, downwards. Kissing, biting. Despite the restraining hand on his throat Mulder is lifting himself against Krycek, twisting and turning, his hips rocking in a blind possessed rhythm he can't control.

That cool cruel tongue is tracing down his stomach, towards his navel. His hips lift again. Krycek leans a little more on his windpipe. The sense of restraint, of his breath turning thick and slow in his throat, only intensifies his arousal. Krycek lifts away from him a little. One hand on Mulder's throat, one at the buckle of his belt. His eyes watching Mulder's face intently. 

"What is it? What's wrong?" Krycek's voice is rough and husky, his fingers on Mulder's belt quick and accurate. The belt comes open, and the button, and the zipper. Mulder can't breathe, and it isn't purely because Krycek is leaning on his throat. "What do you want? You want something?" The grit in Krycek's voice turns into ground glass. His hand goes into the open front of Mulder's trousers. The body under him heaves up, and Mulder makes a desperate noise in his throat. Krycek takes his hand off Mulder's windpipe, and his other hand out of Mulder's trousers. 

"Get these off, come on," Krycek urges, as he gets hold of the sides of Mulder's trousers and starts stripping them off. Mulder heels his shoes off and lifts his hips to let Krycek get his trousers and his cotton shorts off in one go, gasping as his erection flips free, then thrashing up into a sitting position to help Krycek get the trousers and shorts and socks pulled off and thrown on the floor. 

Krycek seems dazzled by the sight of Mulder's fair skin and his bare body and his sweet raw scent, but then he gets it together again, and pushes Mulder onto his back, leaning over him, breathing in his skin and his smell and his heat. 

"This is what you want?" Krycek's voice is fragmenting, cool control and ragged lust fighting for dominance. Cool biting kisses on Mulder's waist and belly, on his hips, on the tops of his thighs. Mulder tries to answer the question, but he can't breathe, let alone speak.

"This is what you want." Lust is way out in front in the struggle for Krycek's speech. Cool tongue against the burning skin of Mulder's balls, in the hot crease of his groin. Cool hands smoothing over and over Mulder's restless hips. Cool breath on the pulsing throbbing heat at the head of his cock.

"Ask nice."

Mulder manages a despairing smile. Krycek is never going to forgive that crack. He opens his mouth, intending to replay Krycek's own abusive answer to the instruction, but what comes out is completely different.

"Please. Suck me."

Krycek gives a low laugh, and Mulder is taken into cool heat, and hot ice, with the vibration of the laugh strumming on his nerves, and the coolness starts to break up, like an ice floe melting, and the heat of Alex's mouth and throat is like living blood flowing through veins of stone. The vaulted ridges of the roof of his mouth; the tempered edges of his teeth; the flesh of his tongue hard, tormenting. No mercy, no ease, no safety anywhere in that mouth. The very sense of danger, of pain just a shade away, jacks along Mulder's nerves, forcing the level of his arousal up and up. 

Spiraling past pleasure, to a point where he would pull away, but Krycek's two hands are on his hips, fingers biting against the bones, bearing down hard and, in struggling under his grip, Mulder intensifies the sensations even more. Up and up. Past pain, past fear, into a deranged form of trust. His nerves strung out, strung tight, snapping, yet never breaking. White fire along every nerve, in every movement of that relentless mouth. 

Mulder isn't aware of how he is arching up off the mattress, head thrown back so far that the muscles at the back of his neck start to cramp, because the pain is absorbed into the burning pleasure. His mouth is open, his eyes are open; but he's blind and suffocating. The cry that tears itself out of him is a piece of glass, turning and twisting in bright light, making flashes of brilliance on its edges.

Merciless ecstasy. Turning for one second into something warmer and kinder and deeper, then gone, leaving his nerves stunned and singing. A rush of air, a shift and slide of weight that is Alex moving over him, leaning on his hands, body poised above him. 

Mulder's eyes have been open all the time, yet there is still a sense of darkness lifting and Krycek's face coming into focus. Except that it isn't Alex Krycek. It's someone wearing his skin. His fine sharp features, his dark jade eyes, his clean bittersweet smell. But it isn't him. Alex Krycek never had that look on his face in his life. He never opened those sea green eyes so wide that those long black lashes touched his eyelids. He never parted those hard cruel lips so breathlessly, so that you could see the glint of his teeth, the sheen of his tongue. He never looked so shaken, so startled, so...

"Did I hurt you?" His voice is almost choked with lust and self recrimination. "I didn't mean to hurt you..."

>From lordly heights of burning desire Mulder manages to bring himself down to open his lips and force his voice to work.

"No." A hesitation. "Yes." The look on Krycek's face necessitates a better effort. "Yes, but it was good hurt."

Krycek breathes out. Mulder realizes that Krycek is shaking. A steady fine tremor going through his arms, where he is resting his weight, one hand on each side of Mulder's head. Mulder, with a sense of putting his hand in the fire, reaches for the waist of Krycek's jeans. He keeps his gaze on Krycek's face, watching for a ferocious reaction. But Krycek just returns his gaze, allowing Mulder to open the buttons of his fly, to start trying to push the soft worn denim down over lean bare hips.

Suddenly Krycek rolls away, onto his back. Mulder feels like he can't move, but he does. He manages to get up onto one elbow, to see Krycek, lying on his back, make a snake lift of his hips to strip off his jeans, down onto his thighs; then sit up and start yanking open the laces of his basketball boots, cursing with impatience, heeling them off half open. The boots thud onto the floor beside Mulder's things, and the denims fall after them.

No underwear, no socks. Mulder considers the thought that nakedness seems to be more natural to Krycek than to other people. He wears enough clothes to cover his skin, and that's all. The concept of wearing something between his skin and the clothes decency demands, he evidently finds superfluous.

Animals don't need clothes. That explains it. Because watching Krycek flex and twist, lying back and turning to face Mulder again, it's clear that that is what he is. A broad heavy well muscled animal. Sleek, dark, graceful, completely unselfconscious. Mulder's gaze travels upwards over smooth pale gold skin, over tawny peach nipples, and silky golden brown hair, over that long muscular neck to Krycek's face. Feral almost smile that isn't a smile, merely a slight lift of his top lip, exposing his teeth a little. Feral eyes with their lids half lowered, shading them. Gleam of green, of turquoise and jade. Mulder thinks of Aztec charms, carved with Gods and Serpents and Demons. Of deities fed with blood.

Krycek moves towards Mulder, and Mulder, hypnotized by desire, turns over, putting his face into the cool cotton quilt.

A touch. Fingers combing gently through his hair, taking hold of it at the back of his skull, turning his head. He puts one cheek to the bed, meeting Krycek's eyes. A little tremor goes through him, remembering the other time they were together. He wants it, he just doesn't know if he can survive it again, not with what he has already experienced of Alex's love making. Alex has calmed and gentled, it's true, but if fucking brings back that rage of lust...

To want so much and fear so much.

Mulder turns his face away, Krycek's grip on his hair making a warm tension on his scalp. He closes his eyes and makes his choice. "Do it," he murmurs.

"Fox?" Krycek can make his voice husky hot seduction in itself. Mulder's erection, buried in the soft cool smooth quilt, pulses and stirs at the sound. "Do you always like to be on the bottom?" Conversational question, coaxing tone. The possibilities it suggests stop Mulder's heart, and his cock jerks, and he has to press his hips into the bed, leaning on the hot jag of pleasure and arousal that tries to take over. 

Struggling to level his breathing, Mulder turns his head back again. Krycek is smiling. Really smiling. Like a whore. 

"I've done it both ways. They're both good. I just thought you...I thought you'd want to be on top. In control." Mulder can't believe his voice sounds as rational as it does. 

Long beat. Endless second, while Krycek smiles his sly, tempting smile. Then he turns away, fingers sliding out of Mulder's hair like a parting caress. Long slow flexing turn, showing his wide heavily muscled back and shoulders, the dark nape of his neck, the shorn bristled back of his skull. His arms stretch out over his head as he lies on his stomach. Thick dense muscle, and golden silk skin and fine fair body hair and a clean dark punched gunshot scar just below his left shoulder blade. 

His words are slightly muffled in the quilt, but they go through Mulder like a knife.

"You do it to me. Fuck me."

Mulder doesn't move for a second. The sight of Krycek's prone body is almost too much. Where to start?

Mulder's fingers bite into the heavy smooth muscle of Krycek's shoulder. "Turn over." Krycek lifts his head, leans up one elbow, uncertain if this constitutes a refusal. "On your back." Mulder hooks his fingers around the shoulder, lifting, pushing. "I want to see your eyes when I fuck you. I want to see your face when I come in you."

Krycek's eyes widen slightly, then return to their long narrow guarded glance. He rolls away from Mulder, onto his back, leaning on his elbows. Mulder closes the gap between them, pushes Krycek in the chest.

"Down." 

Krycek slacks back, flat on the bed, but keeps his head raised, watching warily. He looks like he's having second thoughts. 

Mulder doesn't give a shit. He moves fast, getting on top of Krycek, one hand by his shoulder, his knees either side of Krycek's legs. His other hand snakes under the pillow, slides from side to side till he finds what he's looking for. Krycek sees the tube of slick and lets his head fall back on the bed, closes his eyes briefly, opens them and fixes his gaze on the ceiling. 

Mulder smears out a generous amount of cream and smooths it efficiently on himself, making a sharp little intake of breath as his fingers slide over the sensitive head of his cock. He shifts his weight, getting both knees between Krycek's legs, pushing them apart. He slicks his fingers into the crease of Alex's ass, around his hole. Alex doesn't move, doesn't blink. No reaction at all. 

A little more slick. Pushing his finger into tight muscle. Something in Krycek's face flinches almost imperceptibly. Mulder eases him open.

"Look at me." Gentle, like his touch. Krycek doesn't move, but his eyes flicker onto Mulder's face. Mulder keeps easing, another finger in, turning slowly, pushing in. Still no reaction. Mulder starts a steady gentle push and withdraw. Working to a rhythm. Pushing a little deeper, a little harder. Krycek's face is incredible. A beautiful dead mask. His eyes are more than incredible. His eyelids don't flicker, let alone blink, yet his eyes are in turmoil. It's as if the very color of his irises is moving. Twisting shades of blue green and green blue.

Mulder slides his fingers out, kneels in closer to Alex, hooking a hand under one knee, lifting. Krycek, biddable, bends his legs, feet flat on the bed, lifting his pelvis up. Offered up like a cup on an altar, Mulder thinks. Mulder is shaking, his heart pounding, but he moves slowly and deliberately. He takes hold of his cock, working the hard throbbing head against the opening, pushing in hard but slow. Despite his preparations, it's a real effort to force his way in. Krycek is willing, and Mulder can feel the soft flex of internal muscles as he pushes against Mulder, trying to open himself to him; but it would seem that Krycek does not make a habit of this style of sex.

Krycek still makes no sound, no sign of either discomfort or pleasure. But his face loses something of its perfect indifference: his mouth tenses slightly. Something stifled. Something.

Mulder smothers the gasp that almost starts as he makes it past the initial resistance. As long as Alex is silent, he will be silent. He won't be the first to lose control. 

In further. So that's how Krycek's skin and breath and kisses are so cool. That's where the heat all is. Inside him. Burning hot, and hellishly tight. Mulder has to work for every fraction of an inch, pushing in, easing back, then pushing again. They're both taking long slow carefully controlled breaths. They're both shaking. Mulder gets in to the hilt, pauses for a moment, just trying to keep it together.

So tight and so hot. Mulder half thinks that if he just holds still the heat and pressure alone will put him over the edge. But when he starts moving he realizes he's not as close as he fears. He can do this for a while. He can do this forever. He leans forward, curving his body over the body beneath him, each stroke of his hips lifting Krycek's pelvis slightly. 

Slow. Deep. Mulder feels it in his cock, up his spine, into his brain. Like sharp little claws raking over the inside of his skull. To try and dampen down the intensity of what he is feeling, he concentrates on watching Krycek.

He's fighting to keep his face blank and smooth, but it isn't working. Smouldering eyes, and that deep line across the bridge of his nose, part of the way he frowns. Looking at Mulder with fire-like intensity. His breathing gradually breaking up, becoming ragged and uneven, then settling into the rhythm of Mulder's thrusts. Keeping pace with them, quickening as they quicken. They are matched to each other, breath for breath.

This is a memory. Or the ghost of a memory. From a different life. A different Fox Mulder. 

To have his face close to Krycek's, for them to be locked eye to eye, each determined not to look away. To feel this rage of desire, to want him, yet resent the power that wanting gives him over Mulder. And more even than the wanting, Krycek's cool passive acceptance of it. The almost blank disinterest of his face, giving way only to expressions forced out of him by physical extremis. 

A wave of something very like hate wells up in Mulder, and makes his movements brutal. And Krycek heaves up against him, slow movement, but his breath breaks up again into rapid rhythmless gasping. Then he stills for a second, and gives a low twisting groan. Mulder feels the sound right through his body. Hate swelling into exaltation and sheer delight and a heady sense of mastery. Rocking and thrusting into the hot twisting body under him with perfect careless greed. 

Krycek gulps air, almost cries out, stifles the sound, turns his head to one side, eyes closed.

"You look at me." It's intended to be an order, but Mulder's voice is so husky and shaky and breathless that it comes out more like an endearment. And the endearment compels instant obedience. Krycek turns his head back, licking his lips, catching the lower one in his teeth, and forcing himself to look straight into Mulder's eyes. 

Mulder is right out there on the edge, strung out where pleasure is the cutting side of a blade, parting him from the ability to think. Thought is the power in his hips, the blazing shifting tingle on his nerves. 

Krycek grabs another lungful of air, another cry hovers at his lips. This time he fails to stifle it and it's like ice breaking. The thin cold veneer splinters over the sewer of lust and obscenity that runs just below his so carefully controlled exterior. 

"Fuck. Oh God, yeah. Go on. Fuck me. Fuck it into me. Shit. Fuck you, you're big enough aren't you? Fuck..." 

The rough torn texture of his voice, the almost possessed depravity of the words, lifting Mulder on a swell of arousal, closer.

"Fuck. Go on. Do it. Do it as hard as you fucking like..."

Angel face, burnt into the bone beauty, and a mouth like a Salem devil. Every word shocking and exciting. And even more than the words, the blazing vile pure hunger on his face. Mulder on a trembling edge of ecstasy.

Krycek grips his own cock, holds it hard for a second, trying to delay the inevitable. Then realizing it is inevitable, instead of trying to stave it off he brings it on, pumping his hand half a dozen times hard on the shaft of his erection. 

The sight of his long slender fingers wrapped around his cock is somehow even more visceral than the stream of obscenity spinning out in his low husky voice. Mulder feels like he's has passed through the point of orgasm into some deranged wasteland, pleasure become a fiery airless breathless mindless wilderness.

"Fuck...Yes. Yes." Krycek coils up, curling up off the mattress, one hand catching Mulder by the back of the neck. Mulder feels Alex's climax like a breaking wave, lifting and lowering, and then a fierce pulsing, squeezing his cock in a grip of burning satin. Then he sees it, in the slow heavy pulse of the head of Alex's cock, and the lazy spurt of semen, falling in a rich pearl spatter on Alex's fingers and onto the soft gold skin of Alex's stomach.

For one second Krycek looks as if he is transported by pain, and Mulder feels his own nerves scorch and cinder in the heat, then Krycek takes a couple of deep gasping breaths, and starts laughing. As if being fucked half to death is the funniest thing that's ever happened to him.

Every laugh sends a shaking ground hum through Mulder, and it's just too much. He snarls, trying to hold back, cursing Krycek for being such a fucking idiot, laughing his fucking head off at a time like this and then it just 

For a second the convulsion is so strong it feels like it's going to tear his guts out and throw them into Alex as well, but it eases and resolves itself into a clean deep strong pulse, each beat thrilling through his skull and spine and balls and into the head of his cock, through it, into the hot easy body under him. 

"Aah fuck. I can feel that." Krycek is still laughing, letting himself fall back on the bed. The vibration of his laughter is catching and counterpointing against the thrum of Mulder's orgasm, and then as the spasms of intense pleasure falter and fade, the broken rhythm of his laughter seems to tail the sensation on, and it almost seems to gather force and intensify again...

And Mulder realizes he is laughing too. Gulping air and letting his head hang down, resting his bodyweight on shaking arms. The air in the room suddenly, thankfully, cool on his sweat slick skin. 

"Get the fuck off me, I'm getting a cramp." Krycek manages to say breathlessly, between gasping laughter.

Mulder pulls out, gently, but still making Krycek groan out loud, the groan broken and textured by his laughter. But the effort of actually moving to anywhere is just beyond Mulder. Every muscle is slack, and his brain is still humming. He manages to lift his bodyweight enough to let Krycek stretch his legs out, but then he has to just ease down; taking as much of his weight on his hands as he can to spare Krycek, but resting on him none the less.

Cool damp skin, breathing the scent of sex, as smooth and perfect as peachflesh. Mulder bends his head, resting his lips on Alex's shoulder, feeling a tiny pulse, in the shoulder or the lips. Listening to his heart slowing, and his breathing grow even and easy again. And then, stranger than any of this, stranger than all of this, he feels the light slow stroke of long slender fingers on his hair, smoothing it back off his temple, combing through it idly. He lifts his head, though the effort is immense.

The quiet at the center of his heart opens, and deepens, and turns in on itself, and he feels the tears come in his eyes. And Alex's face, calm and still, but calm and still in gentle warm repose, not guarded and careful, seems suddenly too painful to bear. To Mulder's horror two hot tears well over his eyelids and scald down his cheeks. He tries to pull away, to turn his head. To hide.

Krycek puts one hand to Mulder's neck, pulling him back down, pulling Mulder's face into the angle of neck and shoulder, pulling Mulder's body down onto his cool damp chest. He doesn't say anything, he just holds him there, the fingers on the back of Mulder's neck flexing gently, while his other hand strays lightly across Mulder's shoulders. He's waiting for it to pass. Accepting it as naturally and readily as he accepts all the vagaries of the human condition. 

Hot tears dropping slowly onto his neck, then sliding down into the quilt. 

"What is it?" He is wise enough not to move. Not to attempt to see Mulder's face. His voice is calm, almost distant. Idle curiosity, that's all. And Mulder, feeling under no pressure to answer, finds the answer at once.

"I can't do this any more."

Mulder, with his face in the cool wet skin of Krycek's neck, doesn't see Krycek's face suddenly regain its cold stone perfection. And when Krycek speaks, his voice has just the same lazy low husky tone as before.

"I didn't think you had a problem with this. You seemed okay about it a minute ago."

"Jesus, no. Not us. I didn't mean us." Mulder pulls away, pulling up onto his elbow. And the sight of Krycek's blank guarded expression goes through him. 

How brave are you? Can you put your hand in the fire? Your heart? Your whole life? 

"You're something else. You don't give a fuck about anything, do you? You just do what you want, and the devil take the rest."

Krycek knows there's no right answer to the question, so he just raises his eyebrows slightly. A tiny gesture that could mean 'yes' or 'no' or anything in between.

"You know what? You're right. I wish...I wish I could be the same. Just live my life." Mulder drops his head, smiling bitterly to himself. "My life. Not my sister's. Not my father's. Not Scully. Not anyone. Just mine: for me."

"So walk away from it Fox. You think you can change what's happening? You think you have the power to force the answers from them? And even if you did, what then? The day they tell you the truth is the day you die."

"But I've been spared. All along, I've been spared. And it's up to me to find out why. Why others weren't."

"Even if it costs you your life in the end?"

Mulder's smile, humorless as it is, fades. "I can't walk away Alex. Not without walking away from myself too. Some kind of answer, some kind of certainty, something I can say is mine. Without that, I don't have a life anyway. I feel like they're taking pieces of me. All of them. CancerMan, Skinner, all of them. My father. Scully. Samantha, God forgive me." Mulder's voice is relatively calm and even, but his eyes are pure pain.

"Fox." Krycek's face doesn't exactly soften, but something in it becomes human again, rather than a beautiful mask. "I think..." he draws Mulder down onto his shoulder again, "I think there's someone you should talk to. Someone who could help with this."

Mulder's initial impulse is to sit up, to get a proper look at Alex, to ask a thousand hasty questions. But instead he remains where he is, his face turned into the side of Krycek's neck, one hand on Krycek's smooth chest. 

"Who?" The question is a turning of warm breath against Krycek's skin, coming back to Mulder's own lips.

Krycek's hand is on Mulder's hair again. Stroking over and through it, over and over. Hypnotic. He turns his head, and Mulder feels the gentle pressure of a kiss, placed into the mass of his hair, above his forehead. His voice is very soft, husked. Just a soft hum of sound.

"Rachel."

THE END. For now.


End file.
